Classroom Discipline and Duct Tape Do Not Mix (Updated)
One of the biggest fears one has as a lowly small town official is getting oneself quoted for something that gets picked up state wide, or, perish the thought, nation wide. Nothing good ever comes of such notoriety from elected officials in sleepy little New England villages. It typically means you're going to be a defendant in the very near future.
Well, our Superintendent of Schools made the papers. A young, substitute teacher in one of the three the K-3 Elementary schools saw fit to duct tape some of her students' mouths shut as a disciplinary measure. The superintendent, a class act if there ever was one, was quoted as saying, "It is a very sad situation and nothing that a superintendent can make an excuse for."
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how a professional takes responsibility for their operation.
(Update: The teacher has responded to say the kids were given the tape to play with and not as a disciplinary measure, and you can read that here.)
But let's be honest. Who among us when parenting a child with an acute case of obnoxiousness hasn't wanted to mummify the little bastard in that silvery wonder tool of meatball home repairmen and women everywhere?
I mean, come on. I know the class sizes in this district. This young girl had somewhere between 23 and 28 7 year-olds going off like bottle rockets on her because she was the substitute teacher. You know what those kids were thinking. Time for a movie and a siesta before lunch and recess, BAY-BEE, then who knows what the new teacher will do for the afternoon. Finger painting maybe?
Pre-pubescent excitement filled the air. The din in the classroom likely started out slowly, like the sound of the steam locomotive coming through the tunnel. Then, just as the light got the young sub's attention, that low din turned into a full roar of loud engine noises, metal wheels against the track, and invariably a few high pitched squeals that made the locomotive horn sound like Feng Shui background noise in a rock garden.
There's clearly more to the story. All we know for certain happens to be the application of duct tape to the little devil's lips. Still, we can make some pretty safe assumptions.
Clearly the substitute teacher flinched. You cannot do that. Beginner subs have to "Pull a Bobby Knight," as I called it during my time coaching youth sports. They absolutely have to flip out in a manner that will scare students straight. You have to show them where it is they do not want you to go during their time in your care. You need to escalate the mania until such time as you see the whites of their eyes bugging out of their little demonic heads like they were cornered Irish Setters about to pee the carpet.
If you do not, the students will simply over run the class room like so many Barbarians at the gate just itching to sack Rome.
Or, if that pithy analogy doesn't do it for you, flinching as an inexperienced and untested sub is like being the feeder at the aquarium and cutting yourself shaving before hopping into the shark tank. Little 7 year old dorsal fins start popping up all over the place.
They can smell fear.
So I can totally relate to wanting to resort to duct taping their mouths shut. I coached T-Ball for five years in a row, for God's sake. I know whereof I speak. Herding cats would be easier -- in a goddamn rainstorm.
So I blame the college from whence this young lady graduated. They were supposed to have formalized training. They are supposed to be smarter than us when it comes to handling the unruly little twerps.
Let's face it. We have all deployed parenting techniques in the comfortable confines of our home that would lead to our utter embarrassment if they were to see the light of day. Naturally I live in fear of one of my four children embracing the fascination that is the tell all blog.
But that is why we have public schools. So when the teachers snap and cannot handle the unruly children our poor parenting has nurtured from the angelic little spawn we took home from the hospital, we can get on our high horses and decry the incivility and cruelty of it all.
An overworked public school system relies on a young, likely overwhelmed 22-year-old substitute teacher. A couple of kids who likely could use a good swift kick in the behind at home get dealt with in a rough manner.
And the superintendent wakes up to find a camera crew at her office.
Film at 11:00.
I feel your pain, Dr. Marshall. I feel your pain!
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Comments
Duct taping and tazing kids should be a crime with no argument. The little ones can suffocate if their noses are stuffed up, and tazers are made for adults, not tiny little people.
What makes me sick? When a kid is seriously injured or dies, and the cold blooded and hateful higher up administrators automatically deny any responsibility without even thinking.
So Kudos to that superintendent.
And tazing anyone over 62 should be a crime, too. Some clown tazed a 72 year old woman, but that was down in Texaco, where they don't believe that they're part of America.
She made a mistake that she will never repeat again. Punishment in the media is enough. Rated.
Yes, having been that young substitute teacher, I do understand the temptation toward duct tape. A tank of Piranhas would also be appropos to the aquarium . . . little swarming fish with razory teeth . . .
But. I didn't flinch. Which may be why I'm still here . . .
Zuma: I seriously doubt anyone was ever in grave danger. She was right there in the class, and, being a border town to NH with superior special education services, we are a magnet for that stuff and there was likely an aide in that classroom as well.
Sheldon: You? A substitute teacher? Talk about your raw meat.
OE: I agree. It was a dumb move by a kid who was likely given very cursory instruction and guidance.
Unrelated, but is that a PawSox hat you're wearing?
Shaggy: Hell yes! Kick a trash can, throw a chair. Just don't launch the F-Bomb! And it is a Portland Sea Dogs Hat. Love the logo. City isn't bad, either.
Yours is the pain I feel, Gwool. Life at the top isn't all it's cracked up to be, no?
"herding cats in a goddamn rainstorm" ... story of my life - that's why I had to give up teaching when I reached the 3 kids mark and then give up other people's children all together when I hit 5. It's tough out there and getting tougher. I don't know much, but I can tell you this ... if it gets back to me that my kids are abusing some young substitute teacher for jollies ... duct tape will be the least of their problems. My mother-in-law is also a teacher (40 years in the same school teaching 4th grade ... this is her last year) and we have zero tolerance for disrespect.
Of course, I have plenty of tolerance for disrespecting you though ... so go figure???
Mumblety; Yes, the feeding frenzy of the substitute teacher is universal to all children, I suspect.
Imom, you vixen. You have spawned a team for Bobby Knight to Coach. Put your knees together and keep them that way. We're begging you.
Bad parenting, which is always the basis of a lot of this stuff. I bet your kids don't slouch through life getting a gold star for merely showing up. You don't seem the type to parent like that.
Teachers... you get what you paid for. A full 80% of the teachers at the last job I had (more like 90% in my department) should have been taken out back and shot for crimes against education... Mostly students just vandalized their cars.
A huge percentage of the students who wanted to become teachers (at least the ones that came through my classes) wanted to do so for the wrong reasons. These often overlap, but you hardly ever see all 4 in one person:
1.) Most of them thought it was easy. Maybe it looks that way from the other side.. Especially with so many people half-assing it out there. Summers off whooo! Nobody ever notices the crap pay until too late.
2.)They thought they knew a lot more than they really did about subjects (a result of "everyone gets a gold star" models that have been used a lot recently) while trying to take the least number of "hard" classes as possible.. even in their major. I've seen Science teachers take "non science major" chem classes to fill promotion requirements for secondary ed.
3.) They were good at school. People that are good at school (and a vast majority of people that go into teaching and/or get grad degrees fit here) are usually very bad at dealing with students that are either bad at the traditional models of school or uninterested in it. The idea that someone wouldn't do his or her homework confused them to no end.
4.) A pretty significant number of younger people (male and female) decide to teach in Elementary Ed because they have a kid already. I don't know why this is. None of them coudl ever explain how the cause --->effect worked on this. it always seemed to work in their heads though.
I've seen so many of these people walk out of the classroom as students and trainwreck as teachers.
Even worse, many colleges dump them with the worst students (either abandoned without a paddle as a TA (teaching huge lecture sections) )as someone who has 100% of the duties of a full prof in grad school. My GF in grad school ws from Egypt. She taught almost 2 full semsters semesters (4 classes total) grading papers for British English!?!?! before she happened to ask my opinion on something one night and I noticed al lthe red marks... and why they were there! 2 different supervisors never noticed!
In Seconday Ed. they get the worst classes at a school (because of seniority... senior teachers usually pick the easier students to teach. The new kid doesn't get AP stuff. There are exceptions to this, some senior teachers go out of the way to work harder classes, and some places force senior teachers to take other students. The new kid is usually screwed though... and for less money.
The system is busted all the way up and down, with expectations on all sides... being screwed beyond reality.
I would never have taped a student's mouth shut... not because it was wrong, but because I know I'd never get away with it (legally). Just like I can't do anything about the kid eating stuff off the shelves in the grocery store.
The teacher didn't make the mess. She just snapped and reacted in the wrong way (due to poor / no real training).
I always go back to the parenting /training... The teacher wasn't prepared to deal with that kind of stress. When the system fails over a long period of time, we get the failures creating new failures. From my count, we are on the 3rd generation of half-assed educators as institutional standard (again there are exceptional people out there, but they are rarer than you think).
end of rant.
I remember having my mouth washed out with soap when I said a few choice words to my Dad. Hell, a parent would most likely be arrested for that kind of thing now. Pathetic. Sure the sub messed up but I think an apology is enough.
In 2nd grade I recall popping up from my seat once too often and being tied to it for the rest of the morning with a jump rope. I got revenge because nobody could use the jump rope for its intended purpose.
And, the first thing my Mom said to my teacher each year (with me standing there) was "if you need to paddle him, go ahead and do it".
You're right though. Duct tape is the nuclear option and should not be used prior to a Bobby Knight threat of a full meltdown China Syndrome. The substitute obviously misunderstood the hierarchy of substitute teach intimidation.
Great Post!
But, I can say with complete confidence that, if a tenured teacher had done this here, she would have dismissal charges brought against her, and she would almost certainly be fired. School systems just aren't going to put up with it.
Rated, because if we cannot rate duct-taping children, what have we as a nation become?
I sure wouldn't blame the college... more likely her upbringing.
I am happy to report that all three are contented heroin addicts with Ph.ds in felonious assault....
Back in my day, the mere rumor of an electric paddling machine that had been invented by sour puss Principal Byrd and kept in the boiler room of Central Elementary was enough to keep up us from roughing up a sub. We'da taken duct tape any day over that.
The only result I've ever seen, as a parent or child, from taping a kids mouth shut was giggling, LOTS of giggling. Was there no one here who ever taped their own mouth shut? Or taped their child's mouth shut? I mean, for crissakes, I thought this story was dumb when it came out, I think it's even dumber now. Tape is not child abuse. What maroons!
Anthony: Yes. I remember being awestruck at the New England aquarium watching a guy with a scuba tank swimming around in the main tank handing out fish in a setting with sharks floating by.
Ame: Wow. That would be, uh, old school
Tom: Not a bad descriptor if there ever was one.
Miko: Yeah. This is not to condone what the kid did. I am just able to empathize with her, is all….
Walter; You post has a very critical component to it, in my view. In the old days, if the school called home to a parent, the first reaction was to go to the child and say, “What did you do?” Today, more often than not, it becomes, “Not my baby.” My kids were always furious with me for not sympathizing with them. I simply would look at them and say, “Well, you had to have been doing something to catch their attention, so spare me the martyr routine.” You ask for trouble, and trouble will oblige. It’s that simple. Besides. I know first hand they come by their obnoxiousness quite naturally.
Sally: Knifed by an 8-year-old. Hopefully you did not lapse into an alcohol induced coma like Gene Wilder’s “The Waco Kid” when the little bastard shot him in the ass …
Cartouche: It’s not an inner tube you would have been throwing at it, my dear.
Mary: What are you trying to say there? It does remind me of the old joke of the guy doing a home project while his homely and dim witted wife looks on. He hits his thumb with the hammer, yells “fuck!” and She instantly replies, “Fuck? Oh, get the bag. Get the bag.”
More later. Outside chores beckon. Well, Kayaking beckons. Then chores.
Same goes for you, Mr. No-Nonsense. Times like these, I suspect you of being a bleeding-heart conservative, like my favorite quarterback. I'm glad you're around. And glad I never had you for T-ball.
Bwahahaha!
As to the other piece about the duct tape being given for play? Well, that would certainly shed different light on the matter.
I'll hit the breezier comments when I can, But felt the need to highlight this piece, as well as clarify the use of the term substitute in such ways.
So love this idea. As a 20-year veteran teacher in a public school--and more importantly, the mother of two ("angelic little spawn" is way too understated) teenage boys, I do know that most of us like to think our teachers should be superhuman. I don't want someone teaching my boys who isn't human; I want someone with passion, compassion and the occasional volcanic eruption. (Plus, it makes me look better. . . .)
(I'm convinced, after helping fill ADD Rxs for 7-years-olds day after day for a few years, that they're overprescribed, partly due to pressure from overburdened teachers - one kid was going to be kicked out of school if he didn't start on Concerta pronto.We can't know for sure how the drugs will have affected growing brains until they're adults!)
"Not enough smacks."
She may be on to something.
BTW, does the term "River Rat Race" mean anything to you?
At 7, you didn't speak unless you were asked a question and then you better hurry up and speak loud and clearly.
Nowadays, it seems, the 7 year olds are coming to school with guns and stuff, not that I'm condoing duct taping some kid's mouth, but I'm saying, maybe fear was better than candy and rosebuds and hugs and stuff.
Just saying.....
:)
I'm with you as far as blaming the college where the young sub attended. It's like going to basic training and not showing a soldier how to use a weapon and then sending them into battle. No good can come of it.
I have a 8 year old who would have absolutely panicked at being duct-taped (or whatever kind of tape). And he can be pretty rotten, so I can see the temptation to do so. BUT, ultimately, taping is not acceptable. I'd rather he be paddled.
Cindy: No real disagreement as to what happened in district. My wife did two long term substitutions and was given essentially no instruction. Likewise, the issue of one or two parents gets borne out time and time again. This is not an indictment of single parents or dual income earners in any way, shape, or form, but two can do something easier than one, and there’s more time for the kids if one is at home. Teachers can tell the difference as well.
Jeannette: Yes. The second article, however, shows that some of this might have been a principal with a case of the yips.
Floyd: You do have a way with words, my fellow Bowdoinite. You sure we never shared a bong back there in Brunswick?
Cathy: Not sure if she was dead wrong or simply not aware of the hypersensitivity.
MAWB: My wife and I have had more than a little difficulty dealing with the school based on the way our youngest and only daughter “interacts” with her peers. At home she is fending herself from brothers 10, 8, and 6 years older and then she heads off to school to deal with some first born, and all hell breaks loose. So in come the 50 year old parents to hear complaints lobbed against our child from 30 year old first timers. It’s a challenge.
James: At least they are contented heroin addicts. It means they won’t steal your wife’s jewelry to pay for their habit. Principal Byrd doesn’t sound like he was your “pal.”
Mamoore: Everything I hear, she was a good kid. Parents at my daughter’s softball game who teach in the system were coming to her defense. Read that second article.
Mary: Yes. These stories bubble to the surface about once every 6 to 8 weeks. It’s not really new news. It just makes me flinch as it is in my district where I have had more than peripheral involvement in the school system, so it hits close to home.
Cruelwench: Subbing is not for the faint of heart. Best subs seem to be semi-retired teachers who want to keep their hand in it, but not go in every day. She was hired full time when the teacher died during the school year.
Trig: No kidding. I did 5 years of T-Ball that was about a dozen of them, and that was a challenge enough for this guy.
Jeremiah: Yeah, these stories always have legs. One bubbles up to the surface of the national news about every 6 to 8 weeks. Hopefully this one doesn’t make it beyond the regional level. And I always loved shooting the breeze with the reporters on things like this. Most folks do not understand the value of befriending the reporter and giving them at least pointers on where to go to find pieces of the puzzle. I do not know how many times I would tell them to “go talk to so-and-so, then come back and ask me on the record questions.”
Julie: Yep. I have used that phrase to describe how to deal with a collection of youngsters at the START for years. Show them that stern side and then pull back from it. You can never become stricter with a collection of critters. You have to start strong then pull back. You know, show them who the alpha is?
Don: It really is an underappreciated profession. They simply have no time without interruption when in a classroom with that many kids. I could go on and on about it.
Allie: I think the hope she lands in Jail is way, way over the top, but thanks for stopping by to comment. I realize a lot of people feel that way. I just do not agree with it, however.
Shame on you, Jeremiah, you old liberal you. It's compassionate conservatives like me who are supposed to make that sexist mistake.
Now, picture me sticking my tongue out at you and waving my fingers at you with my thumbs in my ears.
It is entirely possible, Gwool, as the number of people with whom I shared bong hits at Bowdoin actually seems to have exceeded the number of people at Bowdoin. (We were, after all, a small school.) I remember my college years with a suspicious fondness that does not color any other period of my life, and which may have been generated by exogenous substances.
little ass and, they BOTH need to be spanked.
THAT would truly solve a lot of discipline problems.
I was spanked as a kid and, now that I'm a clean minded, clean living older adult male, I STILL enjoy it.
And, of couse, I have NEVER EVER misbehaved.
I don't lie either.
Lisa: Yeah, not a lot there with which to disagree.
Maskaar: The age old battle… Teachers don’t teach the right stuff anymore versus the quality of the product coming from society to them on which to be worked. Clearly each side can find their example with which to go “AHA! See? I TOLD you so!”
Delia: You thinking of teaching or of a career change?
Cindy; Yeah, there’s always several layers to the onion. You have those early grades and have a first born child of neurotically hovering parents, and you can see how this could become a tad, uh, volcanic. I first got secondhand experience to this when my wife as head of the K-3 PTA when we were shepherding our third kid through that school. In short, we were the old blood who had done things wrong for the past 7 years at that school on the volunteer side, and here came the newbies all set to reinvent our wheel system.
Keen: That over medication is a huge problem. Consider as well the idea that this stuff is optional.. Take on weekdays, do not take on weekends or holidays or what have you? I was unaware such mind altering substances were optional equipment like that and consider it a huge mistake.
Don: A shot to the head definitely is an attention getter.
Kelly: had to look it up. Thought it was the Townsend Canoe race, but see it is in Athol. So, no, not familiar….
Phaedo: sure.
Tink: Egg-zactly.
Geezer: Right. I am unaware of a class on crowd control for lack of a better word, yet that is such a huge part of it all.
Michael: Excellent analogy.
Pyschomama: That Bobby Knight suggestion is such a truism, no? Always have to come in hot and then pull back. Come in like a candy ass, you will never get their respect.
J Lynne: As the second story shows, it looks to have been a lot more innocent and likely a parental overreaction giving the principal a case of the yips.
Floyd: I must double check with my “camp joy” roommates ….
Ralph: Thanks.
XJS: I am sure David Carradine would have agreed with you.
This experience turned a normal, happy talkative (!) 6 yr old into a shy introverted scared little girl. I still have trouble joining conversations around more than 3 people. I think I would have rather been spanked than gone through this kind of public humilation. Substitutes or not, there is not now nor should there ever be a reason for doing this.
If this was one flake, it might be acceptable, but I bet it is not. It's every sub everywhere getting hassled. Where are the principals?
And if, as the updated story is true, the kids duct-taped their OWN mouths shut, this whole situation is ridiculous. For crying out loud, we used to tie each other to the playground fence with jump ropes during recess and play Houdini. We'd also stick safety pins through the calloused skin on the ends of our fingers to gross out the more squeamish kids.
Your telling of this story is terrific. "Pulling a Bobby Knight" will be forever in my vocabulary from this day forward.
Leeandra: I remember doing the callous thing. Tying up? Not so much.
Lisa: Thanks for the kind words. Feel fee on Bobby Knight. I have been using it for so long, I cannot recall if I made it up or stole it. It germinated from that film of him at Ohio State flinging the folding chair at a practice, I think. He goes flat out bat shit crazy, and the kids just stand there. No way you wanted to see that action again, so you likely toed the line. Indeed, pulling a Bobby Knight is an attention getter.
To be fair, I have kinder/gentler moves, too. I also talk about doing a standing O where I would put my arms over my head making an O as if I was a member of the Village People during the YMCA dance, if it had an O in it, that is. I do know how to spell, you know ....